[Infowarrior] - Fed law says you can't protest @ Secret Service events

[Richard Forno]

(via TL)     I did not know this...

Federal Law Criminalizes Protesting Trump Now That He’s Guarded by the Secret Service
Robert Mackey
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/01/now-hes-guarded-secret-service-federal-law-criminalizes-protesting-trump/

< - >

The school’s president added that “current federal law (H.R. 347) does not allow for protesting of any type in an area under protection by the Secret Service.”

As journalist Dahlia Lithwick and First Amendment lawyer Raymond Vasvari observed in 2012, when the federal law on trespass was quietly amended by H.R. 347 — to make it a crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, “to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions” in locations guarded by the Secret Service, including places where individuals under Secret Service protection are temporarily located — the new statute made it “easier for the government to criminalize protest.”

What that means in practice is that campaign rallies for Donald Trump, who was granted Secret Service protection in November, and Hillary Clinton, who will be guarded for life as a former first lady, are the very opposite of free speech zones under federal law. (The restrictions also apply to all appearances by former presidents and first ladies, as well as those of two other candidates, Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson, who are currently protected by the service.)

Another problem, as Gabe Rottman, a policy adviser for the ACLU, explained in 2012, is that the amended law “could be misused as part of a larger move by the Secret Service and others to suppress lawful protest by relegating it to particular locations at a public event.”

“These ‘free speech zones,'” Mr. Rottman wrote, “are frequently used to target certain viewpoints or to keep protesters away from the cameras.”

That seems to be exactly what happened in Georgia on Monday. After the students were led out of the Trump rally, local police officers informed them that they were also banned from protesting outside the building — and directed them to “free speech zones” in a field shielded from the venue by a set of tennis courts, or outside a church about a quarter of a mile away.



--
It's better to burn out than fade away.